EC to conduct field trial of VVPAT voting system

Two prototypes to be tested in a simulated election on July 25

danish

Danish Raza | June 21, 2011



The election commission of India is considering introduction of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) to make the voting system more verifiable. On July 25, the commission will conduct a field trial of VVPAT in a simulated election in 36 polling stations distributed over five states.

The VVPAT system prints a paper ballot once the voter has cast his vote. The ballot contains the election symbol, name of the candidate and serial number for the voter to verify. 

“The real time and cost effectiveness of the system will be known only after the field trial,” said Dr Alok Shukla, deputy election commissioner, briefing the media the media about the new system in election commission headquarters on Tuesday.

In an all party meeting held in the commission on October 4 last year, some political parties had suggested introducing of VVPAT in the upcoming elections. 

The commission referred the matter to the technical expert committee on EVM comprising of P V Indiresan, former director of IIT, Madras and four serving professors of IIT.

The committee directed Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) to make prototypes of VVPAT. 

In one system, the printer is completely sealed and inaccessible to the voter, It has a transparent window on the front side. The printed ballot remains in front of the transparent window foe 5 seconds for the voter to verify it. Thereafter it gets cut and automatically falls into a sealed box.

In the other system, the printer is kept open. The printed ballot will get cut and fall in a tray in front of the printer. The voter will pick it up from the tray, very it, fold it and bring it out of voting compartment and drop the same in a sealed box kept for this purpose in front of the presiding officer before leaving the polling station. 

 

Comments

 

Other News

Making AI work where governance is closest to people

India’s next governance leap may not solely come from digitisation. It will come from making public systems more intelligent, more adaptive, and more responsive to the dynamics at the grassroots. That opportunity is especially significant at the panchayat level, where governance is not an abstract po

Borrowing troubles: How small loans are quietly trapping youth

A silent crisis is playing out in the pocket of young India, not in stock markets or government treasuries, but in smartphones of college students and first-jobbers who clicked on the Apply Now button without reading the small print.  A decade ago, to take a loan, you had to do some paperwor

A 19th-century pilgrim’s progress

The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas By Jaladhar Sen (Translated by Somdatta Mandal) Speaking Tiger Books, 259 pages, ₹499.00  

India faces critical shortage of skin donors amid rising burn cases

India reports nearly 70 lakh burn injury cases every year, resulting in approximately 1.4 lakh deaths annually. Experts estimate that up to 50% of these lives could be saved with adequate access to skin donations.   A significant concern is that around 70% of burn victims fall wi

Not just politics, let`s discuss policies too

Why public policy matters Most days, India`s loudest debates stop at the ballot box. We can name every major leader and recall every campaign slogan. Still, far fewer of us can explain why a widow`s pension is delayed or how a government school`s budget is actually approved. That

When algorithms decide and children die

The images have not left me, of dead and wounded children being carried in the arms of the medics and relatives to the ambulances and hospitals. On February 28, at the start of Operation Epic Fury, cruise missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school – officially named a girls’ school, in Minab,


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter